“…Therefore predestined for >Chamber Music< in trusted intimacy – and exactly this is what the soprano Nadine Balbeisi and they Lyra-viol specialist Fernando Marin cultivate. As a Duo, Cantar alla Viola holds a rather singular position… The singing is entirely in the prevailing taste of the period, for which the singer has the right feel. It requires affect, but in this particular combination only in small doses. Fernando Marin used performance technique advice from writings by Gannasi and Castiglione. He leads the bass line smoothly, like a second singer, and with as equally clean gestures, effortlessly creates the supportive harmonies. It is something for fine ears in romantic hours of early baroque.”
From the Magazine “Concerto” G8128 April/May 2010

The Second Booke of Songs and Ayres (1601) by Robert Jones is a collection of 21 songs “set out to the Lute and Bass Viol the plain way, or the Bass by tablature after the lyre fashion.” The manuscript includes a part for lyra-viol in bass tablature to accompany one voice, which is the version we have chosen for this interpretation. Owing to the mixed scordatura (different tunings of the open strings) and the sympathetic strings, the lyra-viol accompanies and carries the voice well and sustains the polyphony like an organ. Thus is the polyphony preserved in its complete harmony and magnificence while enabling the beautiful Elizabethan poetry to become the protagonist in this marvelous renaissance portrait.